What If The Masters of Photography Used Horrendous Watermarks?

Idle thought today while at work was how it seems like many
amateur photographs spend more time putting elaborate watermarks on
their images than they do making images worth stealing. This led to
a second thought that I don’t really recall ever seeing the
photographs of famous art photographers with a gaudy watermark.
This in turn led to one more thought…

What if the masters of photography used horrendous
watermarks?

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Steve McCurry

Joel-Peter Witkin

Andreas Gursky

William Eggelston

Sally Mann

Alec Soth

Garry Winogrand

Well wasn’t that just a ball of fun? Here are a few more links
to some other fun satire posts about famous photographers in the
Internet age.

This page is hilarious and spot on. In my experience, the worse the photographer, the more prominent and gaudy the watermark. IMHO, the reason these are ‘stolen’ less isn’t because of the identifying information, but because they make the photo look just awful.

Hippie Zingo November 1, 2012, 2:53 PM

Well, the bottom line is that any photograph you put online WILL be “stolen,” guaranteed, engraved in stone, case closed. It’s akin to dropping a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk and then leaning out of a fourth-floor window in the building above it, yelling at anyone who goes to pick it up and expecting them to stop. Yeah, right. So, therefore, if you don’t want your work copied and used by any random stranger who happens to come across it, then don’t put it online, simple as that.

Jet October 24, 2012, 4:56 PM

What amuses me is that you think that professional photographers don’t watermark their work; they most probably do, just unlike them the amateur or smaller resourced professional photographer doesn’t have the resources to have it invisibly embedded in the picture’s actual code (see steganography). And as others have said before me; advertising is good.

Chris October 24, 2012, 2:25 PM

As a semi proffesional photographer I put my logo in the corner of almost all of the photos I put online. Why? Because society today seems to think it is ok to copy and use photos without permission. A lot of comments on here seem to underline that.
I run my business to help pay my bills and make a living. Is it fair to have my work stolen like it has been many times in the past? Sometimes by some very reputable companies. My equipment and time is valuable to me so the effort I put into my work deserves more than someone thinking they can just copy it. I’d like to see the response you got if someone like Getty had found you had copied one of their photo’s without permission. I think you need to have a read of the copyright laws.
Let me put it this way, Is it ok to walk into an art gallery, take a painting off the wall, walk out and put it up at home to show all your friends because you liked it?
The reason photographers put watermarks on their photos is to stop idiots like you copying them without paying for our work.
It has become more prevalent now as the digital age has made it easier for work to be copied and ripped off.

EK October 24, 2012, 11:54 AM

Well yeah, obviously if they are posting their photographs on Facebook or on their website, they want something that can’t be stolen and reposted. the best way to do that is make a separate copy with a gaudy watermark.

Fun and thought provoking! I’m a Dorset wedding photographer and I’ve wrestled with this on and off over the years. I’ve finally concluded that however good they are, they’re my pictures, and I assert my ownership!

I never watermark my photographs. If people are on my site looking at my work, then they’ll have probably noticed my name on the site. I don’t mind them being used and those that have, have attributed my name to them. I don’t really worry about it.

I think if I were a wedding photographer or studio portrait photographer and my photographs were my business, my bread and butter, I’d probably do it then, but only to publicize and promote myself.

juice October 12, 2012, 6:06 AM

Yawn. Anyone who doesn’t know how to make watermarking an automatic part of the LR export process – and who doesn’t understand that the printed image from 50 years ago is somewhat less likely to be stolen than digital images today – has to be pretty clueless.

Also, in this age when files are distributed willy-nilly, a watermark can lead people to your business. An unwatermarked image is a marketing opportunity missed.

Brian October 30, 2012, 12:45 PM

In Reply To juice.

Or a watermark that distracts from the image can make anybody who looks at it, quickly look away to the next thing and serve as a deterrent or anti-advertizing mechanism. Many watermarks are so obtrusive that the work is no longer appealing to look at.

Your point is valid but your presentation is way too exaggerated! I hardly see any decent work with such gaudy watermarks, most photogs who really see the beauty of their work have minimal watermarks. Another point you are missing is most examples you posted do not belong to the digital era. The famous images you posted were of the print age so it is not totally correct to compare with today’s problem. Another point is once they are published/recognized in/by a reputed magazine or website the photogs are lesser worried as no one can claim credit for their work ahead of them. Most stolen/misused works are landscapes & generally not portraits, journalistic works. So again depends on genre. But seriously, I never saw pics even by amateur photogs so heavily/gaudily watermarked! I would love to see some real world examples which inspired you in this direction 😉

Pete October 11, 2012, 7:11 AM

Uhhh… Shooting RAW doesn’t protect your photos anymore than having LoJack prevents your car from being stolen. No one likes GAUDY watermarks, but I can spend 10 seconds at least making it difficult or trying to dissuade someone from stealing the work (plus letting people know who actually took the photo) vs. thousands of dollars in legal fees later just so I can say “Hey, the metadata is in the RAW file!” Besides, all of the metadata can be changed too.

The main reason TO watermark in some way is if you do portrait work. Word of mouth is the best advertising, and my clients all ASK me to send them watermarked versions of the full res unmarked shots they bought so that they can post them to social media and share WHO did the work for them.
Otherwise, 9x’s out of 10, when friends see a photo of someone, they say “great photo!”. They don’t care or say “Oooooh WHO took that photo of you?!?”

Brian October 30, 2012, 12:50 PM

This is not invalid.. A lot of these photos ad their heyday in print.. Watermarks sadly are a necessary fact of life these days.. back then hardly anyone at all had the internet and Facebook was not the image stealing-exif data erasing beast it is now.. Today the entire planet is online and people will hijack your image for personal use from Dublin to Tim-buck-Too without a second thought. Look at all the big international image agencies like Getty, Rex Corbis etc and all the stock agencies and all online press.. they watermark absolutely EVERYTHING!

I hope you know the images are all protected by international laws?
You got permission from the photographers above to abuse their photo’s like this, and the right the make them public on the internet?

K. Praslowicz October 10, 2012, 11:45 AM

In Reply To Jordy Caris.

“Abuse” is pretty harsh. Makes it sound like I strong armed my way into each artist’s studio, knocked them out cold with a blackjack and scoured their hard drives for unpublished work that isn’t already widely available on the Internet.

Nah. I have no ethical qualms that these don’t fit in under fair use for commentary & parody.